Remembered By One - Chapter 1

Chapter One

Even with every square
foot of space in disarray, the floors littered with half-packed moving boxes
and the usual bits of a life well-lived spread out in piles to be discarded or
kept, it still felt like home.

Grabbing a stack of
bubble wrap squares, Mason Novak eased his aching body onto the nearest dining
room chair and prepared to box up the china that had graced the table for every
Christmas and Thanksgiving meal he’d ever eaten in this house. The stack of
plates that had served up the best turkey and mashed potatoes in the world fit
easily in the special packing sleeves, but what the hell was he supposed to do about
all those dainty little cups? They’d never make cross-country in one piece no
matter how carefully he packed them.

Ridiculous as it was, it suddenly
mattered a great deal to him that they make it to their new home unbroken.

A pang of homesickness caught
him under the breastbone as he finished wrapping the twelve plates and laid
them in the heavy box. He’d never eat off them again. Not in this house, anyway.
Maybe that knowledge was what bothered him, rather than anything practical. At
thirty-four, it wasn’t like he came home for every holiday anymore. Yet the
nostalgia lingered, not entirely unwelcome, but it hurt more than he wanted to
admit to himself. The dishes would one day go to his little sister, not him.
She was the one who had the children. Two grade-schoolers and a newborn with a
heart defect.

The move had been planned
long before the birth, but now there was a sense of urgency to loading the
moving van, and justifiably so. Not that he resented losing out on what he’d
planned as a two-week long goodbye to both mother and childhood home. Okay, truthfully,
he resented it. Albany might as well be on the far side of the moon for all he
could travel there with any frequency, and his ties to his mother had already grown
threadbare. She had to go, she was needed there, and he could not leave. His
life was here in Portland.

Was
here.

He didn’t have much of a life
anymore. Everything had gone to crap, and this was the second household he’d
packed up in as many months. Along with the dust and old bread bag ties, he’d
swept up the bits of his broken heart and moved on.

Faggots don’t know what love is anyway, his father’s voice chimed in, right on time. “Fuck
off, dad,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that, Mase?”

“Nothing, mom.” Just a
voice in his head, and not a presence in his life anymore. Or his mother’s. His
parents were divorced. Stephen Novak hadn’t called him anything but filthy pervert since high school.
Laughable considering he was the one who’d nail anything in a skirt, regardless
of their age or that gold ring on his finger. Or on her finger. Last he heard,
his sperm donor was happily married
to some young thing and gloating over the perfection of family number two, the
one without the embarrassing faggot and with a wife who still had both tits
intact.

Stephen’s leaving had
never been much of a loss. Most of the memories he had of his father in this
house were now distant echoes faded with time.

His mother Natasha had
been the one who’d made them a family, not his absentee, lawyer father who
preferred billable hours to spending time with his own flesh and blood. But
water under the bridge and all that. He’d hit the jackpot in the mother
department and he’d best remember to be more thankful.

Seemingly summoned by his
thoughts, Nat emerged from under a kitchen cabinet with a stack of mismatched
Tupperware lids and a perplexed frown. “I swear all the lost socks turn into
plastic lids that don’t fit anything,” she grumbled, then tossed them in the
recycling box. “Why don’t we take a break and have something to eat? We’ve been
at it for hours.”

His stomach growled at
the thought of food. He’d always had a fast metabolism and still weighed the
same as he had back in those torturous high school, you’re-nothing-but-a-filthy pervert years. According to his ex, he
was still just as awkward and gangly too, and if Mason had just eaten more and
worked out more and had been just…more,
things might not have ended. Or would have ended differently.

But ended they had.
Richard—Dick—because he was a dick, had instead run off with Mason’s boss.
Which meant not only was Mason boyfriend-less, he was jobless and homeless, and
soon to be motherless. “But I’m a damned good uncle,” he mumbled to his
reflection in the glass of the china cabinet doors.

“Of course you are!
You’re a great uncle. The kids adore you.” Nat answered. Not that he’d been
speaking to her. He never could sneak anything past her super-sonic hearing and
apparently still couldn’t. His private mutterings had never been private. “Come
on, let’s take a break. I picked-up deli sandwiches and that black cherry soda
pop you like so much.”

No wonder he was feeling so
sentimental and nostalgic. The memories were ganging up on him from every
direction. He hadn’t had a bottle of that pop in fifteen years, but his mouth
watered in remembrance. “Is there any ice left?” Because if he recalled
correctly, the stuff was disgustingly sweet and the house was roughly as hot as
his and Dickhead’s last argument.

Nat peered inside the
empty freezer, releasing a cloud of vapor. “Just enough in the tray for a tall
glass.”

Tall glass? To her, that meant
six ounces and not a drop more. No wonder he’d always been skinny.

By the time he stretched
his sore muscles, washed off the grime and made it to the table and chairs out
on the back porch, she had their dinner set out. The ice in his glass cracked
loudly as she filled it with liquid that looked suspiciously like cough syrup,
and then slumped exhausted into her own chair. She looked as tired as he felt.

“God, I hate moving,”
they both said at the same time.

She laughed—his mother
had a great laugh—and began the hunt for any rogue tomatoes that might be contaminating
her sandwich. Finding none, she took a huge bite. “You sure you won’t come?”
she asked after swallowing.

She meant with her—as in a
permanent relocation. He shook his head and swallowed his own lump of
half-chewed, tasteless bread. Nothing had any flavor anymore. “Nah.”

She was silent for a
moment, which was suspicious in itself. She obviously wanted to say something
and normally wasn’t one for holding back. Was it that she couldn’t find the
words, or was it more bad news?

“What?” he prodded. “Just
say it.”

“You should come with
me.”

“Mom—”

“There’s nothing here for
you, Mason. Nothing! Ginny and the kids are happy in Albany, the move was great
for them, and you and Richard…” she trailed off.

Yeah. Him and Richard.

“Well, you’re not
together anymore, not that he was good for you to begin with…and your job is…”

“My job is currently sleeping with my ex-boyfriend?”

“Mason,” she sighed.

What she said was true
though. There was nothing for him here anymore. He just couldn’t seem to leave.

“It’s too soon. I know
it’s too soon. But maybe in a few months…?”

“Time won’t make any
difference.” Some people grew wings and took off to new places without a backward
glance, and others put down roots and stayed. He was a rooter, plain and simple.
The land had got a hold of him and he couldn’t leave. “But I plan to visit as
much as I can. You know that.”

She sighed heavily but
said nothing, made no fresh arguments. Rooters were also stubborn, apparently,
and he’d won this round.

They finished eating in
silence—what was left to say on that subject? They’d been over it before. Nat
tidied their few dishes and came back out on the porch with one of her endless
plastic packing tubs. This one was smaller though, and clear, but the contents were
still a mystery. “These are for you.”

The last thing he needed
was more stuff. Homeless, and all that. “What is it?”

“Photos.”

Lots and lots of photos
by the look of it.

Great. The storage locker
was already packed to the ceiling.

“I had copies made of
some of the nicer family photos and the others are just old snapshots of you
and your friends and some of the neighbors and such.” She gave him a wistful
look. “I can’t take everything. And it’s time I…” she smiled sadly, “well. It’s
just time.”

What she meant was she
knew she wouldn’t be coming back and it was time to shed some of the past onto
her offspring. It had been years since the lump was removed—caught early, thank
god—yet the spectre of death still hung over her, unshakable. Hence the decision
sell the house and move across the country. He understood that shedding a
little better since he’d shed the dickhead. Well, since the dickhead had shed him.

Mason ran his hand over
the lid of the box. They still had an impossible amount of packing to do, but the
prospect of sifting through images of the past seemed a lot more enjoyable
compared to wrapping a thousand fragile tea cups and their teeny-tiny handles,
so he popped open one corner of the lid. The scent of old photos and times gone
by drifted out.

Inside the big box, were several
smaller boxes. Never let it be said his mother didn’t have a box for everything.
Sorted and labelled, too. He peeked at the label on the largest one—marked
‘early family’, scowled, and left that particular trip down the family lane
unopened. He’d had enough ghostly echoes of filthy
faggot for the day thank you very much. But the smaller, unlabelled and rapidly
disintegrating cardboard box held some promise. He carefully lifted it from the
plastic tomb. Valentine cartoon characters from some vaguely remembered TV show
smiled back at him. “What’s in here?”

“Oh, just some pictures
of your old friends. They don’t really mean anything to me, but I thought you’d
like to have them.”

“Thanks.” Not so much,
but it was very thoughtful of her.

“I can’t believe how many
pictures there were of that unruly Porterhouse brat. I thought you hated that kid.”

“I did.” Do.

“Then how come he always seemed
to be over here getting his picture taken?”

“Everyone else hated him
more.” Worse, he still lived in the same goddamn neighborhood, and out of all
the people he’d rather run into—would like
to run into—it always seemed to be Randy fucking Porterhouse he crossed paths
with. Karma was such a bitch. Randy still called him Queer-bait too. Although the
way he said it, it sounded more like Queerbit.

“I always seem to run
into him when I’m shopping at Target,” Nat said.

Which was why he avoided
Target. “That’s because he works there.”

“Oh.” She raised her
brows, a long-wondered question obviously answered. “His shop must have gone
under.” She shook her head. “That’s too bad. He was always so good with cars.
But I can’t say I’m going to miss him terribly when I go. He always looks so
angry. Not as much as when he was younger, but, well, he’s so big. Makes me
nervous.”

Mason flipped through the
stack as the golden, late afternoon sun crawled across the lawn. Randy was
indeed in a lot of the photos. Christ. Did the kid not have a home of his own?

“I believe his father
drank a lot,” he mother volunteered, reading his mind.

“I’d drink too if Randy was
my kid.”

“Mason! He was just a kid,
and his dad was a mean drunk. Don’t be unkind.”

Nat frowned. “Well that’s
rude. And he’s not very imaginative, is he?”

“Nope. And dumb as a sack
of hammers. Target was his true calling.”

Sifting through the stack
of photos sent him further down memory lane, since god knew, he hadn’t spent
enough time there already today. His mother had clearly been extra camera happy on birthdays. The
last of the Kodak shareholders must have loved her.

Cakes. The bakeries must
have loved her too. She always took a picture of him and his sister with their
cakes so they’d know what year it was when the photo was taken. Twelve, eleven,
ten. There were bikes and old-fashioned video games and sports equipment he
never used because he was, you know, a filthy
faggot and couldn’t catch a ball to save his life. Daddy dearest dreamed of
raising the all-star running back at State and got the nerdy science champ
instead.

Funny though—how good ol’
dad wasn’t in many of the pictures.

Must have been busy.

Fucking the neighbor’s
wife.

The lower he went in the
stack, the younger he got. Back in time, he looked less…awkward. In fact, he
looked almost normal in baggy shorts and flashing a huge smile that showed off his
missing two front teeth, his expression clearly indicating how proud he was of
the big cake declaring a sports-themed, Happy
7th Birthday Champ!

Christ. Trying to
brainwash him into the sports hall of fame already. At seven.

His gap toothed smile was
nothing however, compared to the massive grin on the blond kid sitting next to
him. The boy’s grin, literally, stretched from ear to ear. But then he had a
lot to smile about. His shiny new, big, incisors had already grown all the way
in.

Inspecting the rest of
the face and not just the giant white teeth, Mason felt a physical lurch as
time crashed to a sudden, violent halt. His breath hitched in his throat as he
stared down at the photo and the sun kissed face of the kid smiling back up at
him from the shiny photo paper.

Jesus—that kid.

Who was that kid? And why
did looking at him make his heart suddenly start hammering painfully in his
chest?

“Mason? You okay?”

What the hell was this? Thirty-four
was too young for a heart attack, right? He pulled the photo from the hoard and
let the others fall. “M-mom?” He felt like he should know who that was—like,
really, really know, yet the kid’s
identity eluded him. “Who’s this?”

She pried the photo from
his clenched fingers and examined it with furrowed brows. “I don’t know.” She
held it up as if more light would somehow help her figure it out. “I mean, he’s
familiar, like maybe he used to live around here, but I can’t put a name to his
face. There were always so many kids hanging around.” She handed it back and he
took it with an unsteady hand. “Cute kid, though. Photogenic.”

The name still escaped
him. But…

He knew that kid.

Knew him in his heart in
that tight, chest clenching way you remembered that childhood dog you loved and
lost to a fast car or that first girl—boy—you
ever had a desperate crush on when they didn’t even know you existed. A painful
sense of loss radiated up from beneath his breastbone.

He knew that kid!

Then he’d…forgotten him. Somehow, in between the
day when that number seven written out in tooth-staining blue icing slid into
the number eight frosted in bright red in the photo stacked above it, he’d
forgotten him. Forgotten that smile. That freckled nose. That flaxen hair
bleached white by the summer sun. He’d forgotten his name, where he lived, who
he was.

About Me

I'm a writer of erotic paranormal romance (GLBT), a mother of two and servant to a dog and a pair of demanding cats. I'd love to stay home all day and either write novels or read them, but alas, the Evil Day Job keeps me busy (and with a roof over my head). Since I'm scared to touch my website (and my web manager thanks me) I've created this blog to provide updates on my Works In Progress.